Share via

Many a comedian with a hard luck story about dour Scottish audiences, could
learn a trick or two from Al Gore, the 45th Vice-President of the US.

In an unpromising setting, the Scottish Low Carbon Investment conference in
Edinburgh, with an ugly crowd of businessmen, he preached the gloomiest of
messages — our civilisation is at risk from climate change. And yet he still
achieved the unthinkable. He won a standing ovation.

Mr Gore’s public speaking credo? Flatter your hosts. He dragged up the
Scottish Enlightenment, and nation’s great engineering and scientific
traditions and in the present tense he praised Scotland’s